Layoffs at BLOGS!

Nah, I'm basing that on the fact that the number of people who look at blogs in general is pretty static. I actually think Gawker does a good job...it's those political blogs that rub me the wrong way. These douchnozzles bash the Times, the Post, the Journal when none of them have the qualifications to even deliver those papers. Daily Kos.com, Powerline.com, etc. can all suck on my nuts.

 

I see your point, but I also find it amusing that you criticize the bloggers for being unqualified. Who's to say the people writing for "real" papers are qualified?

 

There were in this country, at the dawn of car-making, hundreds of car-makers.

Quite a shakeout took place before we arrived at the "big three."

so it goes.

 

Because they've got great educations and training and experience and smarts....and they were hired by top editors. If you're covering the Pentagon or the White House for the Times or the Post or the WSJ, you're at the top of your profession. Do those guys make mistakes? Yeah. And you've got the Judy Millers and the Jayson Blairs...but those are very rare.
Seriously, compare the resumes of anyone covering a huge beat at one of the agenda setting papers with the resume of any of the top political bloggers...I bet you it will be an ugly, ugly comparision.

 

The Judy Millers and Jayson Blairs don't seem to be that rare, and those are just the people who got caught. Hard telling what else is going on out there. After all, newspapers have no mechanism for outside audits of enforcement outside the newsroom. There is no licensing and no certification. Anyone can be hired at any time for any reason, and that newsroom can decide its own policies. Hell, if the San Antonio paper hadn't ratted on Blair, hard telling how long he would have stayed around. Most of the "editors" at NYT showed little interest in enforcing the rules.

Also, if you limit the field to political bloggers, you're sure to find any number of Fenian Bastards and dog428s who have their "minds" made up about an issue before they gather any "facts." But the more "mainstream" blogs have people with some of the same qualifications you describe. The only thing they lack is a press card and an office where dead trees get newsprint slapped onto them.

 

This is absurd. Rush Limbaugh and his army rail against "the media, the media, the media" for years on end until everyone starts believing that it must be true. What a freaking cop-out it is. DyePack, I understand that there are bad seeds that make it to the top of this profession. That is the case in every profession that employs this many people. A few are always going to know how to work the system and catch some undeserved breaks.

But by far, people at places like Time, NYT, WSJ, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, The New Yorker, etc. know damned well what the hell they are doing. Sometimes I read coverage in places like this and am just blown away. "How did they hear about this!?" or, in the case of the Ron Suskin book excerpt last week in Time, "How did he find all this out?!" There is a book out right now called "Enrique's Journey." It's a very inside-out look at the immigration issue. Based on her 2003 Pulitzer Prize feature series, the depth of reporting the author does is breathtaking to me.

Yet I come on here and read that the writers and reporters at those papers don't know what they're doing? While this woman is riding train tops in the most dangerous areas of Mexico so she can vividly bring the plight of an immigrant into our living rooms? Is Wonkette doing this? Puh-leeze. It's easy for the bloggers to sit in their house and take shots at "the media." But I am continually astounded by the work that people at these publications perform. I guess I'm not too cynical to be blown away by great journalism.

Our business is not infallible, of course. And there should be watchdogs for the watchdogs. But let's not get carried away and begin thinking that average reporter at national publications don't know what they're doing. Because they most certainly do.

P.S. I am very pro "new media" and wish my own shop would catch up to the way people consume news these days instead of constantly preaching about "protecting the print product."

 

Well, then something must be awfully wrong with the system, or maybe the stars are misaligned because a lot of the big stories during the last few years have been wrong.

 

Examples?

 

Don't confuse our resident dicksnorts with real live people that have rent and bills to cover.
Dixie, who were you referring to here? Just curious.

Layoffs at blogs is laughable. There aren't enough blog 'corporations' out there for it to matter. Layoffs at blogs ... im still laughing. How many bloggers - not counting the ones newspapers employed - are out there getting paid?

 

According to this graph (http://www.nickdenton.org/002144.html) Deadspin is doing pretty well, anyway.

 

Do I need to offer them? Don't get me wrong; I'll do it. But people tend to get rubbed the wrong way at this part of the tour.